Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was an English novelist and poet, born at Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, the son of a stonemason, and trained as an architect. From Desperate Remedies (1871) to Jude the Obscure (1895) he wrote fourteen novels set in a region he called Wessex, among them Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the d'Urbervilles, whose tragic plots and frankness about sex and class brought him fame and hostile reviews in equal measure. After Jude he gave up fiction for the poetry he had always preferred. His ashes are in Westminster Abbey; his heart is buried in Stinsford churchyard.